Andy Warhol's Pop Color Mixing

How did I teach color mixing last week? With a little help from artist mentor, Andy Warhol!

The intention for this project was to practice setting up/using/cleaning the laminated color wheel palette, filling in positive AND negative space of an image, and experimenting with different color palette combinations, including tertiary colors.

I chose the same Marilyn photo that Andy Warhol used in his prints. 

I love introducing tertiary colors. Some older classes even understood that tertiary colors could be seen like a math equation: If yellow + red = orange, then 1 yellow + 1 red = 1 orange, which means...

1 yellow + 2 red = red orange 

Only materials needed: 

-laminated color wheel

-primary tempera paint

-tiny/small paint brush 

-celebrity photocopies  

-paper towel for brush

No water cup needed! Just clean your brush on the paper towel, 

and wash the re-usable palette in the sink when finished.     

To make the celebrity prints, I used my macbook to copy an image from the internet, and paste it 4x in Pages. I printed in out, then made tons of photocopies. I chose Andy Warhol, Marilyn Monroe, Maria Montessori, Justin Bieber, Tom Brady, and a few other requests by students. When some students finished, they even made their own portrait in Photobooth and I helped them paste the image three more times in Pages.

(Hmm, I'm just really noticing this student's pallet above.)

 Soup cans and Justin Bieber!

This student is using the secondary color wheel very neatly. 

I cover who, what, when, where, why, and how 

in lessons that feature an artist mentor so I set the scene. 

Using photocopies made this lesson cheap (for me!) an emphasized that element of mass production. I knew that the final product would have looked nicer if we just used markers to color the black and white, but the real purpose for me was to practice mixing paint. Overall, it worked really well! 

Form - Designing a Place-scape

Dots make lines.

When lines intersect they make shapes.

When shapes are in the third dimension they make form!

All grades designed place-scapes using large paper, paper strips, tape, staples, and scissors. I also put out markers in case they wanted to draw into their places. We had some road lines and people drawn in. 

When I walked kindergarten upstairs I told them to look for curvy lines around them to help build schema.

Then, we read Dr. Seuss's Oh the Places You'll Go! for inspiration for unique places with repetition of curved and straight lines. (I skipped a few pages in the middle after the Waiting Place, then jumped back in when it was upbeat again.)

I showed students how to make flat paper pop into third dimension by twisting, folding, rolling, curling. 

I taught two methods of adhesion: tape and staples. 

They designed roller coasters, water parks, skate parks, towns, and some unknown mysterious places. 

The concentration was so focused and engaged. I loved how creative they were. Some of my toughest customers in 3rd grade said this was "the best art lesson ever." Many of the E1 students even moved onto the floor and make large cooperative places with friends. I totally recommend this lesson. We're going to be continuing with something like it next week!  

   

                                    

                                

Ukranian Eggs: Pysaty Folk Design

More lines, colors, shapes, and patterns!

This Easter-timed, but culturally-focused work follows our discussion about story-telling in art.

Each color and pattern on a Ukranian egg represents a story. The word pysaty itself means "to write" with beeswax.

I found this fabulous, old-school Reading Rainbow featuring Patricia Polacco dying pysaty after they read her book, Rechenka's Eggs.

I did this lesson with Kinderhaus first, then tried it with older grades. I wasn't planning on doing it with Middle School, but when they saw the eggs they wanted to, too. A few middle school girls are even planned an egg hunt for the Kindergarteners using the eggs they designed.

I have found that although the watercolor crayon-resist method would make the most sense in this lesson, students have more control of their designs when they just use marker.

Of course another egg-stention of this lesson would be to try to actually dye the eggs in the traditional method, but I wasn't ready for that this year. We'll see about next year.

At the bottom of this post, I copied the symbols and color meanings of the designs from http://graphicoriginals.com/history.html.

Symbols    drawings of symbols (will open in a new window)
Sun, circles- life, warmth and the love of God
Swastika- a common motif for happiness, blessings, good fortune and good will.
Tripod- a solar symbol known from Trypillian times meaning a trinity: birth, life, death; man, woman, child; the magical number 3
Star or rose-usually 8 pointed but also 6 and 5 pointed in ancient times signifying purity, life, the giver of light, the center of all knowledge, beauty, elegance and perfection; the eye or divine will of God, symbol of God's love for man. Today sun and cosmic symbols signify happiness, prosperity and good fortune
Triangles-a trinity; formerly air, fire, water or the heavens, earth and air. Now the Holy Trinity is meant.
Lines-unbroken to not break the thread of life
Sieve-dividing good from evil
Basket-contained knowledge, motherhood, the giver of life and gifts
Rakes-rays from the sun, reference to harvest
Spirals-divinity or immortality
Grape vine-continuity, good fellowship and strong, loyal love; as the wine of communion-the love of God and of Christ for mankind
Deer- leadership, masculinity and victory
Horse- an ancient sign for the sun, believed in ancient times to pull the sun across the sky; therefore, wealth, properity, speed and endurance
Ram- perseverence, dignity, leadership and strength
Rooster- coming good fortune, for men it predicts a rich married life with many children
Hen- fertility
Spider-patience, artistry and industry
Hen's feet-protection of the earth toward her young; guidance of the young in their search for knowledge
Horns-nobility, wisdom and triumph over problems; an implication of manhood and leadership
Wolves' teeth-loyalty, wisdom and a firm grip
Churches-appeared at the time of Christianity, used only in western Ukraine
Birds- precursors of spring
Fish- symbol for Christ and Christians
Netting- separating good from evil
Crosses-in many shapes, usually to represent Christ's suffering
Meander lines- eternal life
Ladders- prayer and rising to Heaven
Wheat- generous harvest
Pine needles- eternal life
Dots- stars and constellations
Flowers- wisdom, elegance and beauty
Leaves and flowers- life and growth

Colors
White-purity, virginity, innocence and birth
Green-renewal, spring, hope, health and victory of life over death, freedom from bondage
Yellow-light and purity, harvest, warmth, wisdom, youth
Orange-endurance, strength, ambition, the everlasting sun, the red of passion tempered by the yellow of wisdom
Red-a positive color for passion, action, fire, spiritual awakening, divine love, used especially for children and youth
Black- constancy, eternity, used with white as respect for departed souls, also fear or ignorance
Purple- fasting, faith, patience and trust
Brown- mother earth, bringing forth bountiful gifts
Blue- blue skies, life-giving air, is a talisman of good health
Pink- success, contentment
4 or more colors- family happiness, peace and love

Monochromatic Robots

I needed a way to name my art room tables, plan seating charts, and introduce my students to the new order in the room. (We gave it a few weeks to see if they needed to have a seating chart, and yeah, the upper elementary grades did.)

Each table was named a color of the ROYGBIV rainbow, plus a "neutral" table because I have 8 tables.

This table naming lent itself well to our next lesson: MONOCHROMATIC ROBOTS!

I am currently enrolled in Deep Space Sparkle's Teaching Art 101 ecourse to give me a little tune up on project ideas. Drawing robots was one of Patty's ideas, and I tweaked it to fit my needs.

MATERIALS:
Shapies - fat and thin
Crayons - I had mine already sorted into separate baskets of ROYGBIV colors.
White paper - I think my paper was about 12x20"

VOCAB WORDS:
LINE
SHAPE
MONOCHROMATIC
TINT
SHADE
CROSS HATCHING (for upper el)

QUESTIONS
Does your robot have a job?
Does it have a name?
Did you repeat shapes?

When these were finished I hung them up in the hallway in ROYGBIV order and they looked fabulous. And THEN the kids really started having ah-ha moments about what monochromatic really meant.

 

2nd Grade Robot

My example

2nd grade

Orange Monochromatic Robots -- with many shades and tints of orange in the basket

2nd Grade-- Kids clothing often times matches their work!

ROYGBIV hallway! I kept repeating the pattern on both sides of the walls. 

A little video interviewing a 3rd grade student about her Robot Book. (Not sure why the image is flipped...) 

Cezanne's Still Lifes

Last week, we talked about SHAPES when we designed our Monochromatic Robots. Since that was working from imagination, I wanted to teach working from observation, especially because I have some pumpkins and gourds!

I chose to look at Cezanne's still life paintings, because he believed in simple shapes (circle, triangle, square, rectangle). The word I added this week was OVERLAP. I wrote the following words on big tag cards, which I will add to our Word Wall.

Still Life
Cezanne
Shapes
Overlap 

Cezanne loved SHAPES. And sometimes, he OVERLAPPED his shapes. Where did he overlap his shapes? 

I cut a variety of smallish pieces of colored construction paper and told the students to create at least 3 compositions, and to try different sized paper. Small is less threatening, and kind of cute. (Some only made one if they were focused and worked large, but I said three for those kids that do a quick job just so they can free draw after the assignment.)

I put out chalk and oil pastel, knowing that my containers would get eventually get mixed (Virgo shudder), but I wanted them to try both materials and work them together. For the kids that truly hate the feeling of chalk, I let them use colored pencils, and they came out with some cool results, too. Either way our goal was TO COVER THE WHOLE PAPER WITH COLOR.

Oh, by the way, I did this with all of my students this week: Kindergarten through grade 8. For Upper Elementary and Middle School I also used the word CROP and we talked about zooming in to the still life and thinking about our edges of the paper.

I always find myself talking about the Venn of drawing from imagination or observation, and how artists can fall in that center hybrid of drawing from observation but making choices about how they are editing. In the images below you'll definitely see where some students let their imagination take over and just used the still life as inspiration... to some students who really took on the task of drawing as realistically as possible, to some who just broke down shapes and color in their composition. Man, I love art.

Here are some images from class:

Put your drawings on a carpet square as you finish them:

               

3rd grade:

4th grade:

7th grade:

7th grade: (with this one with talked about crisp edges vs atmosphere, and how he liked the Impressionists. He was really proud of it and shared his process with the class, which, no joke, the whole class sincerely applauded him when he talked about persevering on it.)

                

1st grade:

4th grade:

3rd grade: